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Dow Jones Reprints: This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit
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Online Warnings Mean Well,
But the Numbers Don't Add Up

This is the second installment of The Numbers Guy, a new column on the way numbers and statistics are used – and abused – in the news, business and politics. I welcome your questions and comments, and will post and respond to your letters soon. Write to me at numbersguy@wsj.com and read other Numbers Guy columns. This column is, and will remain, free to nonsubscribers.

It's an alarming statistic: One in five children has been sexually solicited online.

That stat is turning up on billboards and television commercials around the country, driven by an aggressive push from child-protection advocates. In the TV version, eerie music plays as a camera pans over a school playground and then shows a park. A female narrator intones: "To the list of places you might find sexual predators, add this one" -- as the image changes to a girl using a computer in her bedroom. The spot ends with the one-in-five stat. It's all part of an ad blitz that has gotten millions of dollars of free media time since its launch last year and is set to continue through 2007.

But while the motivation behind the campaign appears to be sound, the crucial statistic is misleading and could scare parents into thinking the danger is greater than it really is.

About This Column

This is the second installment of The Numbers Guy, which will examine numbers and statistics in the news, business, politics and health. Some numbers are flat-out wrong, misleading or biased. Others are valid and useful, helping us to make informed decisions. As The Numbers Guy, I will try to sort through which numbers to trust, question or discard altogether. And I'd like to hear from you at numbersguy@wsj.com. I'll post and respond to your letters.

Here's a more accurate use of the statistic that we'll likely never see in an ad: Five years ago, one in five children -- ranging from fifth graders to high school seniors -- who used the Internet at least once a month said in a telephone survey that they'd received an online sexual solicitation, according to research paid for by advocates of the issue. Solicitations were broadly defined to include "unwanted" sexual talk, whether from someone they knew or a stranger, or any sexual talk with someone over 18. Only 24% of the solicitations came from people who identified themselves as adults; the bulk of the remainder came from other minors (or those purporting to be under 18).

Click above to view the ad called "Places."

Only 3% of the children surveyed said they received an "aggressive solicitation," which includes measures like requests for an offline meeting or telephone calls. None of the solicitations led to actual sexual contact or assault. And most children successfully cut off the undesired communication themselves. (The study focused largely on "live" chats like instant-messenger exchanges; e-mail spam wasn't counted.)

The upshot of all of this is a dated stat -- five years is an eon in Internet time -- that makes once-valid research seem scarier than it is.

It is no great surprise that advertising can present statistics in misleading or slanted ways. But when this happens in commercial ads, competitors can fire back. For noncontroversial issue advertising, no one has great motivation to challenge advocates' claims -- who would argue that parents don't need to be vigilant about their children's online activities?

All of this has created fertile ground for the one-in-five statistic to be recycled over the five years since it was born. Between August 1999 and February 2000, University of New Hampshire researchers directed a telephone survey of more than 1,500 10-to-17-year-olds. The survey was conducted with about $300,000 in funding from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), an Alexandria, Va., nonprofit group that works to prevent the sexual abuse of children. In June 2001, the study was published in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association, which issued a press release about it. (Here are links to a summary of the study and the study itself as published in JAMA, and a full report on the study from the researchers.)

That press release precipitated a barrage of media coverage, mostly headlining that 19% of children had received sexual solicitations. Some news accounts noted that the study covered only regular Internet users, and others noted that the age range of some of the respondents is older than what some may think is meant by "children." But many presented the stat without qualification. One Albuquerque Journal editorial seemed to indicate that the research was coming from actual reports to law enforcement, stating, "Those are only the reported cases; real numbers are likely much higher."

The statistic got new life last May, when NCMEC signed a three-year deal with the Ad Council, the big New York nonprofit organization that places public-service ads for advocacy groups and government agencies. Advertisers pay to produce the ads and the Ad Council gets media companies to donate ad space and time. In this case, NCMEC says it paid $600,000 to New York firm Merkley & Partners to cover costs of producing and filming the ads, and received $11 million worth of advertising time in the third quarter of last year alone, according to the Ad Council. The campaign -- with some new ads -- is expected to continue through 2007.

The one-in-five stat figures prominently in many of the advertisements. You can view the ads from this Ad Council Web page.

There's no question that online sex crimes are a serious problem. According to a separate University of New Hampshire study partially funded by NCMEC, law-enforcement officials made about 2,600 arrests for Internet sex crimes against minors over 12 months in 2000 and 2001. That number surely is lower than the actual number of Internet sex crimes, because many don't lead to arrests and some may not have been classified as arising from online interaction. Still, that's a long way from one of every five children.

Numbers Guy reader Kraig Eno spotted billboards carrying the stat in the Seattle area and researched its source. When he discovered it was based on a five-year-old study and hardly covered all children, he concluded in an e-mail, "The billboard's statement is so misleading as to be almost completely false, however important its warning is. ... But so what if the billboard's statement isn't true? It's propaganda, but it's the RIGHT KIND of propaganda. Nine out of 10 ad executives would surely agree!"

The stat also got attention from University of Delaware professor Joel Best, who in his book last year, "More Damned Lies and Statistics," mentioned it alongside some other published stats about children, like how many are involved in bullying and the percentage of girls abused on dates, in which researchers made methodological choices that tended to lead to bigger numbers.

Dr. Best points out that everyone involved -- advocates, researchers, journal editors and newspaper reporters and editors -- benefits from bigger numbers. And it's not coincidental that he found several examples of questionable statistics involving children. "Expressing threats in terms of dangers to our children is very emotionally powerful in our society," he says.

Kimberly Mitchell, a co-author of the one-in-five study and a research assistant professor at the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center, says it was probably misleading to use the term "children" in ads, since "teenagers" would be more appropriate. Her group chose the age group 10 to 17 in part because "teenagers really are the at-risk population here." She says the research wasn't influenced by the advocacy funding.

Groups behind the ad campaign defend its use of the stats. Ernie Allen, president of NCMEC, says, "We understand that the data are dated and that there are limitations on the use of the data." He says that, if anything, the ad may be understating the risks. He says that in more recent focus-group research conducted by NCMEC, far more than 20% of children interviewed said they had been sexually solicited. "Believe me, these numbers do not hype or exaggerate," Mr. Allen says. He adds that the group is paying about $350,000 for a follow-up study by the New Hampshire researchers to get a more updated number. (It's unclear how five years might have changed things. More teenagers are online more frequently, but automated parental controls from Internet service providers have improved in the interim. There is certainly a lot more awareness now about the risks kids face online.)

Heidi Arthur, senior vice president and group campaign director at the Ad Council, says that the one-in-five statistic grabbed parents' attention in focus groups. Ad Council public-service ads are "never meant to displace other issues like you would if you were an advertiser trying to get someone to switch products," Ms. Arthur says. "You're just trying to get on that list of things people need to be thinking about."

Fair enough, but the details are important. Parents can't be everywhere all the time, and there is no shortage of things to be worried about when it comes to kids -- drug abuse, teen pregnancy, drunk driving, to name but a few. Parents and policy makers need accurate information so that they can figure out how best to focus their prevention efforts. Unfortunately, when they rely only on shocking stats like the one at the center of NCMEC's campaign, they're not getting the whole picture.

What do you think? Write to me at numbersguy@wsj.com. I'll post and respond to your letters here soon.

Readers Respond

Here are some of your letters to my column. Letters have been edited for space and clarity.

* * *

Curt Raffi: I appreciate your desire to report numbers correctly, yet, I believe you could have chosen a better topic to examine. The issues of a child's exposure to sexual predators and sexually explicit material also involves the psychological as well as physical impact on children. It's not simply a "four out of five dentists surveyed recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum" type discussion. It's a far more destructive issue than that.

You've chosen to focus on the facts that only 3% of the children surveyed said they received an "aggressive solicitation," and that the age range of some of the respondents is older than what some may think is meant by "children." When dealing with sexual development issues and wounds it is careless to slice and dice aggressive solicitation from inappropriate discussions. Being the father of children ranging from 5 to 15, I can attest to the fact that they can be affected in deeply developmental ways by all levels of the issue, and "yes" they are still children at 15.

Psychologists today have found that any exposure to sexual images, discussions or innuendo beyond [a child's] age range can cause unwanted psychological distortions, and are often interpreted by the developing mind in the same way as a sexual assault. Unfortunately, I can attest to that from my own childhood and from many of my friends. For that reason alone perhaps the survey should have include sexually focused spam in those statistics, which many children receive on the order of hundreds per month.

Please be careful and don't be statistically myopic with the issue. While I believe in truthfulness, you do children a great disservice when you shift the focus of a horrifically damaging underreported and growing problem and turn it into a graduate-student exercise of correctly representing the number of dimpled chads. Please choose more wisely.

Carl: I appreciate and share your concern about the dangers of sexual solicitation of minors, as I note in the column. But that doesn't make the issue immune from statistical analysis. Like I said, parents and policy makers need to have accurate information about how widespread a problem is, and how best to address it. And while all unwanted sexual solicitations are too many, some are worse than others.

The public-service ad campaign could have focused on the issues you raise, such as potential effects on the psychology and sexual development of youngsters. But it used a dated stat in a way I thought was misleading. I'd argue it would be statistical myopia to ignore that.

* * *

Tim Trewhella: Thanks for your article regarding the stats on online sexual harassment of children (well, 'tweens and teens anyway.) While there's no excuse for bad statistics or sloppy reporting of them, I would suggest to you a nonscientific way that you might judge the extent of the problem. Use your instant-message client -- AIM, Yahoo, or MSN -- and create a screen name such as Missy14 or Sara1992, then enter a regional chat room or any similar public chat room. Stay online for two hours, and count how many times you get accosted. It's just frightening to see adults typing things like "I'm 32, what grade are you in?"

I first became aware of this through the website perverted-justice.com members of which pose as children online, and which has been responsible for numerous arrests and convictions of those who prey on children.

This is in no way to disparage your fine article. It's well needed. What's clear, however, is not just the need for better reporting of the statistics, but a better means of gathering accurate data on this problem.

I don't know if you recall the great abduction panic of the 80's -- there's a great article from George Mason University's site and NPR did an interview with a Denver Post reporter whose work earned a Pulitzer for researching the real numbers behind the claims.

Carl: Agreed -- better reporting of statistics is always welcome. And if in this case the updated study finds that the incidence of online sexual solicitation has risen, that's useful information that should be reported and addressed by parents and policy makers.

As for perverted-justice, it seems well-intentioned, but from perusing what others have written, its methods are controversial and may hamper law-enforcement investigations. (See this Salon article and this Detroit Free Press column.)

* * *

Tom Hunter: Hello numbers guy and thanks for taking this one on.

I'm the parent of a four-year-old girl who is going to grow up into an attractive teenager. At some point between 12 and 15 (and I hope its on the 15 side) she is going to change from being cute to being sexy. Shortly after that she is going to get sexually solicited by 15- to 17-year-old boys. I doubt I will like this but I think its inevitable and it would be even worse if no one ever made a pass at her. This fact makes the study you quote meaningless. If they had only studied 17-year-olds the numbers might have been over 80%.

What would be a really big help is a study of comparable risk to our children. Look at the rise in the number of kids being driven to school over the last 20 years. I get the impression that people drive their kids because it keeps them safe from predators though I could be wrong. But cars are dangerous and lack of exercise is even more dangerous. Are we reacting to the wrong threat?

I can't tell what the real risks are and I don't see anyone making a real effort to help me make good decisions about the trade-offs that make up life as a whole. Instead there are a whole bunch of advocacy groups hollering about the particular threat they are paid to focus on: crime, sex, obesity, drugs -- you name it.

Carl: We do need studies to tell us how dangerous these individual problems are in the first place, but it would be far more helpful if the studies were standardized and then compared with each other for relative risks, rather than reported in isolation by advocates. By the way, how do you know more children are being driven to school in the last 20 years? Has there been a study? Drop me a note.

* * *

Loretta Middleton: I agree -- parents need to know the truth about risks. These bloated figures lead many parents to restrict use of the Internet for their teenagers at a time when communication with peers is critical. This can backfire by creating a barrier between parents and teens that reduce the influence they have on their child. Parents should discuss the risks and ensure that the communication remains on line and that they do not meet these Internet buddies without parental involvement. There are risks everywhere but if parents overreact their children will stop paying attention to what they say and their children will be at greater risk.

* * *

Steven Anderson: I have long felt that this one-in-five figure was bogus; thank you for confirming that with researched detail. However, the age of the statistics is of lesser moment; the main issue is the accurate handling of the statistics that are currently available. Your reader Mr. Eno defined propaganda as advertised falsehood, and defends propaganda so defined when employed in the service of a cause previously judged as good. This is wrong, because truth is always good in and of itself and falsehood is always bad, even when the intention of the speaker is consciously good. In this way, the overzealous advocates of even a good cause can do much harm. In the case of the one-in-five propaganda, in addition to the lack of perspective for the temptations assailing youth that you wisely mentioned, damage is wrought to the credibility of the Ad Council and, even worse, to the credibility of the use of statistics as a social analysis tool. Listeners quickly become inured to shouting.

It seems that packing our children into a cocoon of inviolable safety, even at the expense of other good and important considerations, has risen to the status of religious doctrine in our society. One example of this is the legal requirement that children ride in the back seat of passenger automobiles. The relative safety of this position is an important consideration, to be sure, but so is the fact that many families are very short on the precious time needed for parent-child communication. I have wondered whether the distractions of trying to interact with an unseen small one mitigates the safety of the more protected seat. Balancing such factors should be the province of the parents, not the society.

Carl: "Listeners quickly become inured to shouting" -- spot on. As for Mr. Eno, his comment was meant sarcastically. He wouldn't defend the use of faulty statistics for a good cause, nor would you, nor would I.

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General Motors Co. Chief Executive Mary Barra earned $16.2 million in a choppy first year at the helm, a pay package that far outpaces her predecessor’s compensation and exceeds the initial target set by the board when she took the job.

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About Carl Bialik

Carl is a former technology reporter for the Online Journal who lives in London. In addition to the Numbers Guy, he writes daily about sports numbers on WSJ.com. Carl has a degree in mathematics and physics from Yale University.

About Carl Bialik

Carl, a former technology reporter for the Online Journal, is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, N.Y. In addition to The Numbers Guy, he also co-writes The Daily Fix, a sports column that appears each weekday morning on WSJ.com. Carl has a degree in mathematics and physics from Yale University. He welcomes your letters at numbersguy@wsj.com.

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